He shut off the shed lights and froze.
Liz stood at the other end of the kitchen in her nightgown.
“There’s someone here,” she whispered.
“Where?” Alan asked. He ducked as the black shape swooped towards him.
Liz flicked on the lights.
Alan slammed himself back against the wall as the shape changed direction and darted back towards him again.
“Get a towel,” Alan said. He reached behind himself and grabbed the broom that was propped in the corner.
Liz let out a little yip as the thing turned her direction. She dropped to a crouch and crawled towards the dish towel that hung from the oven handle. Alan took a swipe in the air. He didn’t want to hurt the bat, but he needed to get it on the floor.
The bat went down.
Liz landed on it with the towel.
“Be careful. I’ll put it back out,” Alan said. He took a step towards Liz.
It was too late. With throaty grunts, Liz stomped her heel on the towel again and again.
“Wait!” Alan said.
He pulled Liz back, away from the bunched towel on the floor. Alan pulled back one corner of the towel and quickly laid it back over the mess.
“Did I get it?”
He looked up at his wife. Her face was a mixture of hope and fear.
“Did you get it? Sugar bear, if you’d gotten it any more, we’d have to replace the floor. I was going to put it outside. Bats are beneficial—they eat mosquitoes,” Alan said.
“Bats live outside. If they come inside, then they’re subject to same treatment as any other rodent.”
“Okay,” Alan said. “Okay. Go back to bed. Crisis averted.”
Liz turned and did her little victory dance as she walked away. Alan picked up the corpse of the invading bat and headed back for the shed. He was careful not to lock himself out and walked through the dooryard. No sense in leaving another smelly mess in the garbage. The trees were alive with wind. As he crossed the driveway, the light in their upstairs bedroom clicked on and then back off.
Alan took the bat through the yard and tossed it into the woods past the little stone wall. He shook the towel. It had a dark splotch of bat blood. Back in the kitchen, with the door locked again, Alan rinsed the dish towel under cold water in the sink. He dropped it into the washing machine before he headed back upstairs.
Liz was already asleep again. Alan kicked off his damp slippers and slid under the covers to nestle against her. She stirred.
“I hate bats,” she murmured.
“Apparently,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have killed it though.”
“Okay.”
He took a deep breath and let his exhale tickle her neck. She snuggled back into his grasp.
“When it first dive-bombed me, I thought it was a person,” Alan said. “Probably because you said there was someone in the house.”
“I didn’t mean the bat,” Liz said.
She turned a little in his arms.
“The Colonel was up here,” Liz said.
“Huh?”
“His spirit or whatever,” she said. “It was up here. I came down to tell you and that’s when the bat came out. He’s gone now.”
“What are you talking about?” Alan asked. The hair on the back of his neck was standing at attention.
“Never mind,” she mumbled. Her breathing grew deeper and he felt her body relax as she drifted off to sleep. Alan watched the silver clouds blowing by for a long time before he could find sleep again.
CHAPTER TWO
Neighbor
SEPTEMBER 2
“YOU BETTER get going, Joe. You’re going to miss your bus. Remember the new schedule?” Alan asked.
“Okay,” Joe said. He got up fast and banged the table.
Alan looked up from the dishes. His eye caught a shape moving on the road. With a flash of recognition, Alan pushed away from the sink. He dodged around Joe and ran down the hall towards the front of the house. He peeked through the windows next to the front door as the jogger ran by.
It was the carpenter. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, but the hair and chin were the same—Alan was sure of it. The man jogged easily down the road. He didn’t even look like he was sweating. As Alan watched, the man disappeared on the other side of the trees.
“What are you doing, Dad?” Joe asked.
Alan jumped.
“Jeez, Joe. Get going. You’ll be late. I’m not driving you if you miss the bus.”
“You mean I get to stay home?” Joe asked. He had a big smile on his face.
“No,” Alan said. He grabbed Joe by the shoulders and marched him back down the hall. “If you miss the bus then you have to walk to school. I’ll follow behind you in the car to make sure you don’t dawdle.”
“What’s dawdle?”
“Put it on your vocabulary list,” Alan said. “Come on, I’ll walk you to the end of the driveway.”
Alan grabbed his paperback book from the top of the dryer on the way out. He stopped at the end of the drive and watched Joe walk down the road. He heard the bus rumbling in the distance and hoped that Joe made it in time. As far as Alan could see, there was no reason the bus shouldn’t come the extra hundred yards and just turn around in their driveway after picking Joe up, but the driver had been adamant.
Alan sat down on the asphalt and flipped through his book, looking for the right page. He wanted to be there when the jogger came back—he was long overdue in apologizing to the carpenter for sneaking up on him. It had been almost a week since he’d photographed the man working on his deck.
He sat and read in the driveway for an hour before he gave up. His neck was stiff from hunching over the book. He dusted himself off and went back inside. His list for the day looked remarkably like the one from the previous day. It had two items—cleaning, and laundry. Neither captivated him. Alan sat down at the kitchen table and listened to the clock tick.
A headache was rumbling in the back of his skull and starting to gather steam. Alan went to the sink, downed a pill with a glass of water, and then turned for the door. He stopped while slinging his camera bag over his shoulder. It could give the wrong impression, he decided. He took off the bag and stopped in the shop. He grabbed a paintbrush—brand new and still in the package—from the shelf and banged through the screen door. His stride was light as he walked through the shed.
Alan hurried up the hill beside the house. He felt silly holding his paintbrush as he rounded the building. It occurred to him that he didn’t even know if this house belonged to the carpenter. He’d just assumed that the guy was working on the deck of his own house. He might be a contractor who lived down the road.
Alan walked up to the door. There was no porch. The entry was only a couple of feet above the ground, but Alan felt ridiculous reaching up to knock on the door from the ground. He put the paintbrush in his back pocket and looked around nervously while he waited. The house had a two-car garage with no doors. Alan could see the taillights of a tall vehicle parked in one of the bays. The other housed a riding mower that was so clean it might have never been used. Glancing at the yard, Alan wasn’t surprised. There was only one small patch of grass—the rest was scrubby dirt littered with oak leaves and acorns. Two bushes were planted at the corners of the house. One was dead. The other was cut back so much that it looked like someone was trying to kill it.
Alan knocked again.
The door was in good shape. It was one of those metal-clad doors that was hard to paint but would last pretty much forever.